Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Look who's back...!

You'd recognise that cheeky white face anywhere, wouldn't you? Solomon, who went home in January has come back for a "short break" to get his hooves back on track.

Before any of you who have ex-rehab horses start panicking, it is normally the case the rehab horses
go home and stay there - a quick rendezvous with their old chums back here is not scheduled for any of the other horses until September(!).

In January, he went home to a normal livery yard (like most rehab horses) and spent the next couple of months going from strength to strength - hacking, schooling and doing miles and miles, often at speed.

However, when he came back here on Saturday this is how he was landing:

Typically when horses go home, they carry on improving steadily for the next 3-4 months - they no longer need special surfaces, just work and great nutrition - so what had gone wrong for Solomon?

The clue is in his landing - which had gone from heel first to toe first - and was confirmed when I looked at his hooves.

He actually still has great frogs, compared to how they used to be when he first arrived in shoes, but they aren't doing what they ought to be at the moment: both photos show that frog has stopped weight-bearing.

Piecing together the clues, the trigger seems to have occurred in April, when he suddenly went lame following a trim - although I can't be 100% sure that the trim was totally to blame, he is one of the reasons behind the "celery" posts, I'm afraid.

Although he improved over a few days, he didn't get back to his old self. Lucie took photos and video which she sent to me and it looked then as though his foot balance had been upset and he had gone back to landing toe first. It wasn't initially clear whether grass was also a factor (as it so often is in the UK at this time of year) but even when Sol was kept off grass there wasn't any improvement.

The final giveaway that it was a hoof balance problem (apart from the video footage) was that he was worse the more he had been moving around. Once a horse is landing toe first, then the more they do, the harder the ground or the faster they go, the more likely there is to be a problem.

There is no difficulty per se with any of these: as long as the horse is landing correctly, fast speed and even hard ground are do-able, and certainly don't cause major lameness. But once you add a toe first landing, its a stress on any horse, and the harder the ground and faster the pace, the more of a problem it can cause.

Fortunately, its usually quite straightforward to rebuild a better landing once horses are here, and as its so much more comfortable for horses they will "default" to it given half a chance. So I am hoping and expecting that Solomon will be back to normal and on his way back home very rapidly.

After all, he is a feisty Welsh cob who doesn't suffer fools gladly and there is no-one more eager than him to be out and about - I will put up new footage and photos as soon as I can.

I don't think there's any thrush - his frogs are lovely and very dry and hard - whereas straightout of shoes they were indeed a bit thrushy. Seems a thing of the past though. I'll put more pics up soon.

C - I will put some more photos up, but basically he was very, very sore when he was trimmed - Lucie described him as crippled - and as it was a non-invasive trim, the most likely problem is that it upset his m/l balance, put some strain on a ligament/tendon and thats what made him sore.

If that's the case, the frog looking as it does is a response, not a cause (ie its got weaker because he has landed toe first for a couple of weeks). I don't actually think its the main source of the problem.

Because he has been so sensitive to a trim before, taking his heels down may well be putting the cart before the horse - it would engage his caudal hoof and frog more, but equally he will do that anyway on the surfaces here. I'd rather give him a few days and see if his landing and frog improves (as I suspect it will) with support and stimulus.

Rockley Farm's Blog

A diary of whats happening at Rockley, whether its news on rehab horses or on our own horses hunting and competing. All the horses are barefoot, and the blog includes updates on hoof rehabilitation and information about barefoot performance.

You can find out more about research, rehabilitation and our horses on the pages above or at our website: www.rockleyfarm.co.uk.